Saturday, January 29, 2011

It's well over three months since I had my NHS healthcheck. So I was gob-smacked today to get a letter telling me I have failed it. The letter actually says some of my indicators are 'outside the normal range' and that I need to see my GP, who will tell me about it. No information about which indicators.

I've been in a bad mood all day. My first thought was to write straight back and demand they give me the indicators before I see the GP. I was out walking for three hours this morning. At first I got really hot - which suggested to me I was about to have a heart attack. In truth I was too well wrapped up against the cold. Then I felt nothing - and that's been a problem with walking recently. I don't feel like it achieves anything - probably because I'm fitter than I was and stepped up my walking during the cold and snow, while others stepped down.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

I tried my home-made tuna and tomato sauce. As I'd got a supply of tinned tomatoes I made the rest of the family a bolognese sauce at the same time. I cook for others like Beethoven wrote music - I have no idea what it tastes like and cannot taste as I go along. It's all pure guess work.

We also obtained a pack of shallots - which are allowed but we very rarely use. It was the last pack in Tesco's and reduced in price to 75p. I feel I could do more with them - can you pickle them like onions?

That was about two weeks ago and I may still be suffering. I had severe tummy-ache for several days following the meal. The Italian restaurants must be using a magic ingredient that counteracts the tomato - perhaps olive oil? This needs to be investigated further. I used about a third of the tin of tomatoes on myself and gave the rest to the others.

So I cannot recommend tuna and tomato as a way of getting tomato into the diet. However in case you have to cook bolognese sauce for the rest of the family when they refuse to share your sardine/mackerel/tuna and cabbage sauce, here is what I did:
brown mince in rapeseed oil;
stir fry some leek, cabbage and shallot in separate frying pan (and that formed the base for my own meal);
add the fried vegetables to browned mince, along with tin of tomato;
add a liberal dose of Italian herbs;
add a little bit of soy sauce;
add two beef stock cubes;
simmer and add some water from the pasta saucepan. If still too runny add a little flour to thicken.
I did not taste this once but they assured me it was delicious - and I did not catch them making faces behind my back.

Monday, January 03, 2011

Sometime ago I reported eating out in an Italian restaurant and having to eat a dish packed with tomato and herbs. The dish seemed to be fine because it was fish, rather than meat.

I've now had the same experience again. We found a reasonably-priced Italian restaurant with a good variety of choices. The dish I chose was linguine and king prawn. I didn't expect it to have quite so much tomato in it - that wasn't advertised. But it was delicious, really tasty. And there have been absolutely no side-effects, zero side-effects. I did leave most of the chunks of tomato - but there was plenty in the pasta sauce also.

It helped no doubt I took a montelukast that day and also helped I was eating a sea-food meal. But after a Christmas season which was quite difficult - and that may have been down to drinking white wine - it's fun to enjoy a meal with strong tastes and suffer absolutely no after-effects.

Now, if I remember right, my last list suggested tomato was low in salicylate - not high and not zero. But I've avoided it as I've avoided onion (see a current discussion on this site), because it seemed strongly implicated when problems first started. I vividly remember that meal of celery and cherry tomato when I was on a near-starvation diet and how my mouth just swelled up. The allergy consultant was also impressed by that story.

And Italian food was strongly linked to my initial symptoms. My body could not handle spaghetti bolognese and pizza. So should I try to introduce more tomato into my diet?

About this blog

When I started getting acute allergic reactions, mainly to Italian food, I thought it must be wheat. Then tomato became a problem and the list of problem foods grew. Eventually a doctor diagnosed salicylate allergy, an extreme form of aspirin allergy, for salicylate is found in most fruit and vegetables and many other foods. This is the story of a rare(ish) food allergy.

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